Professor Michał Paweł Markowski , Chair in Polish Language and Literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago, one of Poland’s leading scholars and public intellectuals and the author of well over a hundred articles and more than a dozen books in Polish, including the seminal study of Witold Gombrowicz, Black Waters: Gombrowicz, World, Literature which was nominated for the Nike Award in 2005 and Polish Modern Literature: Leśmian, Schulz, Witkacy (Universitas, 2008), which is an indispensable introduction to Polish modernism; as well as books on Nietzsche, Derrida, and literary and cultural theory.